A king is terrified by hearing awful cries in the night and is urged by his family priest to avert the evil omen by the sacrifice of living creatures. A young brahmin interprets the sounds to be the cries uttered by lost souls in Hell, and the king takes comfort and forbids the sacrifice.

How a willing servant was reborn as a king: how he shared his kingdom for a time with a poor water-carrier who had shown himself an honest fellow: how a barber got from the king the explanation of his birth in the kingly rank, and became a paccekabuddha, honoured by the king.

A boy receives, as a gift from a goblin mother, the power of recognizing footsteps even in the air, and a king, to test the boy's skill, steals his own jewels and then sets the boy to catch the thief. When the boy by a number of pointed stories convicts him of theft, the king is put to death by his own subjects and the boy becomes king.